Re: [PLUG] NTFS --> to ? Conversion

[gabriel rosenkoetter <gr@eclipsed.net>]

On Wed, Nov 13, 2002 at 10:21:14AM -0700, W. Chris Shank wrote:
> I think it would appeal to any technical person who would like to see an
> in In-Place migration from Windows-to-Linux be possible.

While this is attractive for that reason, it's horrendously
complicated.

First, NTFS keeps files in a drastically different way than ext3 (or
say that sentence the other way around, it really doesn't matter;
neither is particularly "standard"). It's probably simply impossible
to convert one to the other without using some amount of scratch
space.

Second, I don't know that NTFS is even *documented* unless you sign
an NDA with MS. Which means no GPL'ing the software you produce.
(Same's true for reverse-engineering, if you take EULAs as legal...
and it doesn't really matter whether *you* think they should be
legal, it matters whether MS will sue you. And if you start
distributing something for in-place Windows->Linux conversion,
they will.)

-- 
gabriel rosenkoetter
gr@eclipsed.net

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